Kirzner Terminology Flashcards
Iambic hexameter, a common form in French poetry but relatively rare in English poetry
Alexandrine
Story with two parallel and consistent levels of meaning, one literal and one figurative, in which the figurative level offer’s a moral or political lesson; John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”
Allegory
Has only one meaning (for instance, it may represent good or evil), as opposed to a symbol, which may suggest a complex network of meanings
Allegorical figure
The system of ideas that conveys the allegory’s message
Allegorical framework
Repetition of initial sounds in a series of words
Alliteration
Reference, often to literature, history, mythology, or the Bible, that is unacknowledged in the text but that the author expects the reader to recognize
Allusion
International device in which authors invoke a number of possible meanings of a word or grammatical structure by leaving unclear the meaning they intend .
Ambiguity
Has three syllables, two unstressed and the third stressed
Anapest
Character who is in conflict with or opposition to the protagonist; the villain . Sometimes a force or situation rather than a person .
Antagonist
Modern character who possesses the opposite attributes of a hero. Rather than being dignified and powerful, tends to be passive and ineffectual. Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman
Antihero
Figure of speech in which an absent character or personified force or object is addressed directly, as if it were present or could comprehend
Apostrophe
Image or symbol that is so common or significant to a culture that it seems to have a universal importance .
Archetype
Stage in which the actors are surrounded by the audience; also called theater in round .
Arena stage
Brief comment spoken by the actor to the audience and assumed not to be heard by other characters
Aside
Reposition of vowel sounds in a series of words: “creep three feet”
Assonance
Tone or mood of a literary work, often established by the setting and the language . The emotional aura that determines readers expectations about a work .
Atmosphere
Poem about morning usually celebrating the dawn
Aubade
Narrative poem, rooted in oral tradition, usually arranged in quatrains rhyming abcb and containing a refrain
Ballad
Alternates lines of eight and six syllables . Typically only the second and fourth lines rhyme
Ballad stanza
Short tale usually including a moral, in which animals assume human characteristics
Beast fable
Comedy that relies on the morbid and absurd . Often are so satiric that they become ironic and tragic
Black comedy
Lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter in no particular stanzaic form .
Blank verse
Decisions about how characters move and where they stand on stage in a dramatic production
Blocking
Harsh or unpleasant spoken sound created by clashing consonants
Cacophony
Strong or long pause in the middle of a poetic line created by punctuation or by the sense of the poem
Caesura
Literally, “seize the day” the philosophy that gave its name to a kind of seventeenth-century poetry arguing that one should enjoy life today before it passes one by
Carpe diem
Traditionally, the moment in a tragedy after the climax, when the rising action has ended and the falling action begun, when the protagonist begins to understand the implications of events that will lead to his or her downfall, and when such events start to occur
Catastrophe
Aristotle’s term for the emotional reaction or “purgation” that takes place in the audience watching a tragedy
Catharsis
rhyme that occurs in the first syllable or syllables of the line
Beginning rhyme
What happens in a drama
action
Fictional representation of a person, usually but not necessarily in a psychologically realistic way.
Character
Well developed, closely involved in the action and responsive to it.
Round character
static, stereotypical,
Flat Character
growing and changing in the course of action
Dynamic Character
remaining unchanged
Static Character
Way in which writers develop their characters and reveal those characters’ traits to readers
Characterization
Group of actors in classical Greek drama who comment in unison on the action and the hero; they are led by the Choragos
Chorus
Attitude toward art that values symmetry, clarity, discipline, and objectivity. Neoclassicism, such as that practiced in eighteenth-century Europe, appreciated those qualities as found in Greek and Roman art and culture; Alexander Pope’s poetry follows neoclassical principles.
Classicism
Overused phrase of expression
cliché
Point of greatest tension or importance, where the decisive action of a play or story takes place.
Climax
Type of poetic structure that has a recognizable rhyme scheme, meter, or stanzaic pattern.
Closed form
Play meant to be read instead of performed–for example, Shelly’s Prometheus Unbound
closet drama
Any literary work, but especially a play, in which events end happily, a character’s fortunes are reversed for the better, and a community is drawn more closely together, often by the marriage of one or more protagonists at the end.
Comedy
Comedy that focuses on characters whose behavior is controlled by a characteristic trait, or humor, such as Volpone (1606) by Ben Johnson, who popularized the form.
Comedy of humors
Satiric comedy that developed during the sixteenth-century and achieved great popularity in the nineteenth century. This form focuses on the manners and customs of society and directs its satire against the characters who violate its social conventions and norms. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde .
Comedy of manners
Extended or complicated metaphor, common I the Renaissance, that is impressive largely because it shows an author’s power to manipulate and sustain a striking comparison between two dissimilar items; John Donne’s use of the compass metaphor in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is an example.
Conceit
Poem whose typographical appearance on the page reinforces its theme, as with George Herbert’s “Easter Wings.”
Concrete poem
Struggle between opposing forces (protagonist and antagonist) in a work of literature
Conflict
Meaning that a word suggests beyond its literal, explicit meaning, carrying emotional associations, judgments, or opinions. Can be positive, neutral, or negative.
Connotation
Peak or moment of tension in the action of a story; the point of greatest tension is the climax
Crisis
Dictionary meaning of a word; its explicit, literal meaning
Denotation
Literary, “the god out of the machine”: any improbable resolution of plot involving the intervention of some force or agent hitherto extraneous to the story.
Dues ex machina
Particular regional variety of language, which may differ from the more widely used standard or written language in its pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary. Eliza Doolittle’s cockney dialect in the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion is an example
dialect
Conversation between two or more characters
dialogue
Word choice of an author, which determines the level of language used in a piece of literature
diction
lofty and elaborate diction (typical of Shakespearean nobility)
Formal diction
diction that is idiomatic and relaxed (like dialogue in John Updike’s “A&P”)
informal diction
the specialized diction of a professional or occupational group (such as computer hackers.)
Jargon
The colloquial expressions, including slag, of a particular group or society
Idiom
Poetry whose purpose is to make a point or teach a lesson, particularly, common in the eighteenth century
didactic poetry
phrase or word with a deliberate double meaning, one of which is sexual
double entendre
literature written to be performed
drama
Type of poem perfected by Robert Browning that consists of a single speaker talking to no one or more unseen listeners and often revealing much more about the speaker than he or she seems to intend; Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is the best known example for this form
Dramatic monologue
Characters in a play
Dramatis personae
Poem commemorating someone’s death, usually in a reflective or mournful tone, such as A. E. Housman;s “To an Athlete Dying Young.”
Elegy
Leaving out an unstressed syllable or vowel, usually in order to keep a regular meter in a line of poetry (“o’ver” instead of “over,” for example).
Elision
Line of poetry that has a full pause at the end, typically indicated by a period or semicolon
End-stopped-line
a four-line stanzaic pattern closely related to the ballad stanza. It differs that its rhyme scheme is abab rather than abcb
common measure
something whose meaning is so widely understood within a society that authors can expect their audiences to accept and comprehend it unquestioningly–for example, the division of plays into acts with intermissions, or the fact that stepmothers in fairytales are likely to be wicked
Literary convention
evoke a general and agreed upon response from most people
conventional symbol
exists when fate frustrates any effort a character might make to control or reverse his or her destiny
cosmic Irony
stanzaic form of two lines
couplet
A type of meter which is composed of three syllables, the first stressed and the subsequent ones unstressed
Dactyl
Final stage in the plot of a drama or fiction. Here the action comes to an end and remaining loose ends are tied up.
Denouement
when there is more than one story but one string of events is clearly the most significant, the other stories are called subplots.
Double plot
Oedipus the King, depends on the audience’s knowing something the protagonist has not yet realized (and thus experiencing simultaneously its own interpretation of the events and that of the protagonist).
Dramatic Irony
Where rhyming syllables are put at the end of a rhyme
End rhyme
Line of poetry that ends with no punctuation or natural pause and consequently runs over into the next line
enjambment
Three-line conclusion to a sestina that includes all six of the poem’s key words, three placed at the ends of lines and three within the lines
Envoi
Long narrative poem recounting the adventures of heroes on whose actions depend the fate of a nation or race. Frequently the gods or other supernatural beings take active interest in the events presented .
Epic
Generally to describe a sudden moment of revelation about deep meaning inherent in common things.
Epiphany
Word consciously chosen for its pleasant connotations; often used for subjects like sex and death whose frank discussion is somewhat taboo in our society.
Euphemism
Pleasant spoke sound created by smooth consonants
Euphony
First stage of a plot, where the author presents the information the reader or viewer will need to understand the characters and subsequent action.
Exposition
Artistic and literary movement that attempts to portray inner experience. It moves away from realistic portrayals of life and is characterized by violent exaggeration of objective reality and extreme with mood and feeling.
Expressionism
A comparison used throughout a work.
Extended metaphor
Short didactic story, often involving animals or supernatural beings and stressing a plot above character development., whose object is to teach a pragmatic or moral lesson.
Fable
Stage in a play’s plot during which the intensity of the climax subsides
falling action
Trochaic and dactylic meters, so called because they move from stressed to unstressed syllables.
Falling meter
Nonrealistic piece of literature that depends on whimsical plot, supernatural or mythical characters, implausible actions, usually with a happy ending
Fantasy
Comedy in which stereotypical characters engage in boisterous horseplay and slapstick humor
Farce
Form of narrative that is primarily imaginative, though its form may resemble that of a factual writing like history or biography
Fiction
(also called double rhyme or falling rhyme) two syllables correspond, the second of which is stressed
Feminine rhyme
Expressions that suggest more than their literal meanings.
Figures of speech
Figurative language that depends on international overstatement
Hyperbole
Concise form of comparison equating two things that may at first seem completely dissimilar
Metaphor
Figure of speech in which the term for one thing can be applied to another in which it is closely associated
Metonymy
Attributing of human qualities to things that are not human
Personification
Comparison of two seemingly unlike things using the words “like” or “as”
Simile
Figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole
Synecdoche
Intentional downplaying of a situation’s significance, often for ironic or humorous effect
Understatement
Variation on chronological order that presents an event or situation that occurred before the time in which the story takes place
Flashback
Minor character whose role is to highlight the main character by giving readers a chance to compare and contrast their qualities.
Foil
Each repeated unit of a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
Foot
Presentation early in a story of situations, characters, or objects that seem to have no special importance but in fact are later revealed to have great significance
Foreshadowing
General organizing principle of a literary work. In poetry, it is described as the presence (or absence) in a particular work of elements like rhyme, meter, and stanzaic pattern.
Form
open form poetry makes use of varying line lengths, abandoning stanzaic divisions, breaking lines in unexpected places, and even abandoning any pretense of formal structure
Free verse
The five parts of classic dramatic plots: exposition, complication (the introduction of elements that will lead to conflict and ultimately crisis), climax, catastrophe, and resolution.
Freytag’s Pyramid
Category of literature. Fiction, drama, and poetry are the three major genres; subgenres include the novel, the farce, and the lyric poem.
Genre
Seventeen syllable, three-line form of Japanese verse that almost always uses concrete imagery and deals with the natural world.
Haiku
Aristotle’s term for the “tragic flaw” in characters that eventually causes their downfall in Greek tragedy.
Hamartia
Traditionally, the use of the Bible to interpret other historical or current events; in current critical theory, the principles and procedures followed to determine the meaning of text
Hermeneutics
First used by Chaucer and especially popular throughout the eighteenth century, as in Alexander Pope’s poetry, consists of two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter with a weak pause after the first line and a strong pause after the second.
Heroic Couplet
Term introduced in 1877 by George Meredith to denote comedy that appeals to the intellect, such as Shakespeare’s As You Like IT.
High Comedy
Tragic flaw of overwhelming pride that exists in the protagonists of a tragedy
Hubris
Literary attack on folly or vanity by means of ridicule; usually intended to improve society
satire
Type of meter that has two syllables, unstressed followed by stressed
iamb
Words and phrases that describe the concrete experience of the five senses.
Imagery
a group of related images developed throughout a work.
pattern of imagery
a from of imagery that mixes the experience of the senses (hearing something visual, smelling something audible)
Synesthesia
Freezes the moment to give it the timeless quality of painting or sculpture
Static Imagery
Attempts to show motion or change
kinetic imagery
Contemporary version of an old, even ancient, oral tale that can be traced back centuries through many different cultures. Folktales include fairy tales, myths and fables.
Folktale
Movement in modern poetry much influenced by haiku, stressing terseness and concrete imagery.
Imagism
occurs when consonants in two words are the same but intervening vowels are different. “pick/pack” “lads/lids”
imperfect rhyme
Describes a work that begins in the middle of the action in order to catch a reader’s interest.
In medias res
consists of rhyming words found within a line of poetry
Internal rhyme
literary device or situation that depends on the existence of at least two separate and contrasting levels of meaning or experience.
Irony
Irony that exists when what happens is at odds with what the story’s situation leads readers to expect will happen.
Situational Irony
Irony that occurs when what is said is in contrast with what is meant. It can be expressed as understatement, hyperbole, or sarcasm.
Verbal Irony
Group of literary works generally acknowledged to be the best and most significant to have emerged from our history. The cannon tends to be conservative (it is difficult to add or remove works from it), and it reflects ideological positions that are not universally accepted.
Literary canon
Descriptions, analyses, interpretations, or evaluations of works of literature by experts in the field.
Literary criticism
Introduced by George Meredith, it refers to comedy with little or no intellectual appeal.
Low Comedy
Form of poetry, usually brief and intense, that expresses a poet’s subjective response to the world. In classical times, lyrics were set to music. The Romantic poets, particularly Keats, often wrote lyrics about love, death and nature.
Lyric
Single syllables correspond
Masculine rhyme
Lyric poem that focuses on a physical object, using this object as a vehicle for considering larger issues.
Meditation
Sensational play that appeals shamelessly to the emotions, contains elements of tragedy but ends happily, and often relies on set plots and stock characters.
Melodrama
Aristotle’s term for the purpose of literature, which he felt was “imitation” of life; literature represents the essence of life and we are affected by it because we recognize elements of our own experiences.
Mimesis
Extended speech by one character
Monologue
Atmosphere created by the elements of a literary work. (setting, characterization, imagery, tone, and so on)
Mood
Medieval Christian allegory
Morality play
Reasons behind a character’s behavior that make us accept or believe that character
motivation
Medieval play depicting biblical scenes
Mystery play
Anonymous story reflecting the religious and social values of a culture or explaining natural phenomena, often involving gods and heroes.
Myth
The “storytelling” of a piece of fiction; the forward-moving recounting of episode and description.
Narrative
Person who tells the story
Narrator
Nineteenth-century movement whose followers believed that life should not be idealized when depicted in literature. Rather, literature should show that human experience is a continual struggle against an implacable natural world.
Naturalism
Greek comedies of the fourth and third centuries B.C. that followed the Old Comedies. They were comedies of romance with stock characters And conventional settings. They lacked the satire, invective, and bawdiness of Old Comedies.
New Comedy
Fictional narrative, traditionally realistic, relating a series of events or following the history of a character or group of characters through a period of time
Novel
Extended short story, usually concentrated in episode and action but involving greater character development
Novella
Relatively long lyric poem, common in antiquity and adapted by the Romantic poets, for whom it was a serious poem of formal diction, often addressed to some significant object that has stimulated the poet’s imagination
Ode
The first comedies, written in Greece in the fifth century B.C., which heavily satirized the religious and social issues of the day
Old comedy
Word whose sound resembles what it describes: “snap, crackle, pop.”
Onomatopoeia
Sometimes called free verse or vers libre, open form poetry makes use of varying line lengths, abandoning stanzaic divisions, breaking lines in unexpected places, and even abandoning any pretense of formal structure
Open form
Writing that stresses careful description of setting and the trappings of daily life, psychological probability, and the lives of ordinary people. It’s practitioners believe they are presenting life “as it really is”; Ibsen’s A Doll House is an example .
Realism
Principal character of a drama or fiction; the hero. The tragic hero is the noble protagonist in Classical Greek drama who falls because of a tragic flaw.
Protagonist
Open form poem whose long lines appear to be prose set in paragraphs. For example, Walt Whitman’s “Calvary Crossing a Ford.”
Prose poem
Arch that surrounds the opening in a picture-frame stage; through this arch the audience views the performances
Proscenium arch
Pictures, furniture, and so on, that decorate the stage for a play.
Props
First part of a play in which the actor gives the background or explanations that the audience needs to follow the rest of the drama
Prologue
Works aimed at a mass audience
Popular fiction
Suffering that exists simply to satisfy the sentimental or morbid sensibilities of the audience
Pathos
Narrator or speaker of a poem or story; in Greek tragedy, the persona was a mask worn by an actor
Persona
Episodic, often satirical work about a rogue or rascal
Picaresque
Stage that looks like a room with a missing fourth wall through which the audience views the play
Picture-frame stage
Way in which the events of the story are arranged.
Plot
When there is more than one story but one string of events is clearly the most significant, the other stories are called
Subplots
Perspective from which a story is told
Point if view
Prose tale set in an idealized rural world; popular in Renaissance England
Pastoral romance
Literary work that deals nostalgically and usually unrealistically with a simple, preindustrial rural life; the name comes from the fact that traditionally pastorals feature shepherds
Pastoral
Exaggerated imitation of a serious piece of literature for humorous effect.
Parody
Seemingly contradictory situation
Paradox
Story that uses analogy to make a moral point
Parable
Phrase combining two seemingly incompatible elements
Oxymoron
4.a. A group of eight lines of poetry, especially the first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet. Also called octet.b. A poem or stanza containing eight lines.
Octave
An eight line stanza set in iambic pentameter
Ottava rima
An octave rhymed abba/abba with a sestet rhymed cdc/cdc or a variation
Petrarchan sonnet
Four lines
Quatrain
The final stage in the plot of a drama or fiction. Here the action comes to an end and remaining loose ends are tied up
resolution
Organization, strategy, and development of literary works, guided by an eye to how such elements will further the writer’s intended effects
rhetoric
repetition of concluding sounds in different words, often intentionally used at the ends of poetic lines.
rhyme
rhyme where three syllables correspond
triple rhyme
occurs when words look like they should rhyme but are pronounced differently
eye rhyme
The corresponding vowel and consonant sounds of accented syllables must be preceded by different consonants
perfect rhyme
Regular recurrence of sounds in a poem. Ordinarily determined by the arrangement of metrical feet in a line.
rhythm
Form of irony in which apparent praise is used to convey strong, bitter criticism
sarcasm
Curtain that when illuminated from the front appears solid but when lit from the back becomes transparent
scrim
reaction against the comedy of manners. This type of comedy relies on sentimental emotion rather than on wit or humor to move an audience and dwells on the virtues of life
sentimental comedy
Poem composed of 6 line stanzas and a tree line conclusion called and envoi. Each line ends with one of six key words. The alteration of these six words in different positions–but always at the ends of lines–in the poem’s six stanzas creates a rhythmic verbal pattern that unifies the poem
sestina
background against which the action of a piece of literature take place; the historical time, locale, season, time of day, interior, decoration, and so on
setting
Fictional narrative centered on one climatic event and usually developing only a single character in depth; its scope is narrower than that of a novel, and it often uses setting and characterization more directly to make its theme clear
short story
convention of drama in wich a character speaks directly to the audience revealing thoughts and feelings which other characters present on stage are assumed not to hear. Taken to reflect a characters sincere feelings and beliefs
soliloquy
Fourteen line poem, usually a lyric in iambic pentameter. It has a strict line scheme in one of two forms: the Petrarchan sonnet or Shakespearean sonnet.
Sonnet
three quatrains rhymed abab/cdcd/efef with a concluding couplet rhymed gg
Shakespearean sonnet
Narrator or persona of a poem or story
speaker
A nine-line form (ababbcbcc) with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last line in iambic hexameter.
Spenserian stanza
Two stressed syllables
spondee
actions or movements of an actor onstage–for example, lighting a cigarette, leaning on a mantel, straightening a picture.
stage business
In the production of a play, scenery and props. In expressionist stage settings, scenery and props are exaggerated and distorted to reflect the workings of a troubled, even abnormal mind. Surrealistic stage settings are designed to mirror the uncontrolled images of dreams or nightmares.
stage setting
seven line stanza set in iambic pentameter
rhyme royal
